All-Star Ballot Snub Is Latest Event Motivating Utah's Paul Millsap

Filed under: Bulls, Jazz, NBA All-Star Game, FanHouse Exclusive

SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah forward Paul Millsap strangely was left off the NBA All-Star ballot this season. He figures it was just another career slight.

Millsap dropped into the latter part of the second round in the 2006 draft despite having been the NCAA's only three-time rebounding leader ever at Louisiana Tech. He never could crack the Jazz's starting lineup regularly until this, his fifth NBA season. And now, even though he had been pegged as a starter for this season, he wasn't on the ballot chosen by a media panel for the Feb. 20 All-Star Game in Los Angeles.

"Coming into the season, they didn't think I was going to be as good as I am right now, so they left me off,'' Millsap said in an interview with FanHouse about the move that led to an apology from one of the ballot's selectors, NBA.com's Art Garcia. "It's a reoccurring process where things like that happen. After a while you just get used to it, and people undermining you.''

Millsap figures he'll just use the snub to give him even more motivation, as if that's needed. After scoring 22 in Friday's 117-105 win over Orlando at EnergySolutions Arena, Millsap is averaging 18 points as well as 8.1 rebounds per game.

Actually, in the summer of 2009, Millsap didn't get any slights when it came to Portland signing him to a lucrative offer sheet when he had become a restricted free agent. He got a four-year, $32.5 million deal, which the Jazz matched.

But the 6-foot-8 Millsap, who averaged 16 points and 10.6 rebounds in 38 games as a starter in 2008-09 when then-Jazz power forward Carlos Boozer was out due to injury, returned to Utah to once again come off the bench. Boozer had elected not to opt out of the final year of his contract.

Source: http://nba.fanhouse.com/2010/12/11/all-star-ballot-snub-is-latest-event-motivating-utahs-paul-mill/

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